Editorial: Out of tragedy, the ultimate gift

Jul. 11, 2012

In December, Lauren Shields urged newly naturalized citizens to become organ donors during a Naturalization Ceremony at Nyack High School. Lauren, a Stony Point resident, is a heart transplant recipient. / Matthew Brown / The Journal News

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The young summer has been stung by tragedy — lives of local residents taken in what has seemed like a looping reel of drownings, bicycle and motorcycle crashes, falls, and even a lightning strike.

Amid the shock of unexpected loss, two families recently gave the greatest gift that can come from unspeakable tragedy — they have permitted organ donation, so that someone else may be saved.

In June, the Legislature approved Lauren’s Law, which makes a question about signing up for the state’s donor registry a part of the state’s driver’s license and ID application. Previously, a question about signing up for the state’s donor registry was an optional part of the application.

Making people think

The question — those 18 and over can respond either with “yes” or “skip this question” — doesn’t force anyone to commit to organ donation, but it encourages the applicant to think about what could be a lifesaver for another. Gov. Andrew Cuomo should sign the bill into law.

New Yorkers lag behind the nation when it comes to registering as organ and tissue donors. According to the New York State Organ Donor Network, 19 percent of eligible donors are currently enrolled in the New York State Organ and Tissue Registry; the national average is 43 percent.

The law is named after Stony Point’s Lauren Shields, who is alive because someone made the decision to allow a lost loved one’s heart to be transplanted into a dying 9-year-old whose family was quickly running out of hope. Lauren is now 12. The first version of Lauren’s Law didn’t pass in 2011, but it was revised and reintroduced. Lauren lobbied for the bill, and speaks eloquently any chance she gets about the importance of organ donation.

Her motivation? “I never want anyone to have to wait for a transplant like I did,” she said during a June news conference when the bill passed the Legislature.

The bill’s sponsors were state Sen. David Carlucci, D-New City, and Assemblyman Felix Ortiz, D-Brooklyn, whose adult son has had a pacemaker since he was a child.

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Advocates have long struggled with how to promote organ donation, a topic that demands close examinations of one’s deepest held beliefs. Contemplating one’s mortality on line at the DMV has often been seen as a deeply flawed system.

New York is just the second state — along with California — to make the organ sign-up question a part of a license application, rather than an optional query. In March, Facebook joined in donor advocacy, by allowing users to update their status as a donor, and providing links to state online donor registries.

The choice is often left to families, who must make it amid the worst of circumstances. This week, the family of Peter Sauer agreed to donate his organs after the 35-year-old Scarsdale man died after collapsing during an adult recreation league; the Westchester County medical examiner said he had an enlarged heart. The same hard decision was made by the family of 15-year-old Jared Amory of White Plains, who was taken off life support days after he was found drowning in a Peekskill swimming pool.

The mother of Corey Foster said Tuesday that she had donated her son’s tissue to a skin bank, after the 16-year-old suffered cardiac arrest April 18 as he was being restrained at a residential treatment center in Yonkers.

The need is great. Some 114,000 people in the United States are waiting for organ transplants; nearly 10,000 New Yorkers are on the state’s organ transplant wait list, with someone on the list dying every 15 hours, according to the New York Organ Donor Network.

Lauren’s Law is an oddity in New York, named in honor of a victory, rather than a tragedy. It could also be called Jared’s Law or Peter’s Law or Corey’s Law, for the humanity and compassion shown by their families.

Reflect on what they gave, and what Lauren Shields received, the next time you are filling out forms at the DMV.